Carbon offers financial and know-how support to indie studios in the region

Carbon, Romania’s first incubator company that wants to develop the gaming industry, has been created in the Eastern Europe region where the number of game developers has been growing steadily in the last couple of years.

Carbon was founded by a group of veterans in the gaming industry: Catalin Butnariu, Head of Deployment at Amber Studio, Dragos Hancu, General Manager at Amber Studio, and Jaime Gine, a Spanish investor with a vast experience of more than 15 years in the gaming industry.

The idea of creating an incubator company is a direct result of indie studios’ need of funding and know-how, which continues to rise in this region. Carbon wishes to support regional entrepreneurs in the gaming industry by helping them to develop unique games and establish sustainable businesses.

“Romania is an important regional hub for video game development. Despite the fact that there are many talented and skilled people here, almost all major project developed in the country in the last 15 years belong to giant companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft or Gameloft,” said Catalin Butnariu, Co-Founder of Carbon, and President of RGDA (Romanian Game Developers Association).

“Our goal is to expand the local entrepreneurship in the gaming industry by helping projects with good potential to grow and become popular on a market that is not friendly enough with start-ups in this business category. We hope that as time goes by Romanian developers will be able to establish their game studios and gain confidence in the resources this region has to offer,” added Catalin Butnariu.

The incubator company offers direct funding of up to $50,000 per project, as well as customized counseling services, split in three packages, depending on the needs of each businesses.

All start-ups will be advised by a network of mentors – design, production, monetization and business development experts. To maximize the launch of a product, Carbon can also provide start-ups with additional funds for marketing, which vary by project.

More importantly, developers will remain 100% independent during the funding period. Carbon is willing to share the risks with indie studios that are funded from its resources since the business model of the incubator company is based on revenue share, which means that Carbon will receive a certain percentage from the revenue generated by supported projects. In this regard, Carbon will collect 7-21%, depending on the services package chosen by the funded start-up.

Indie developers who wish to benefit from Carbon’s new program must register, starting with 2nd of May 2016, on the company’s website carbon-incubator.com and present their project to be selected for funding. All teams selected for the funding program will be invited to a meeting with Carbon representatives to determine whether or not they will be supported by the incubator company.

The first important partner of the incubator is Amber Studio – www.amberstudio.ro – the biggest independent video game development studio in Romania. The first project Carbon has decided to invest in is called Gray Dawn, a game developed by Interactive Stone Studios. The first person horror adventure/puzzle game is already listed in Steam Greenlight.